Why I’m drafting boring running backs in 2024

Yusuf Dikec is the living, breathing embodiment of the glory of boring.

Dikec, as you may have seen if you’re as chronically online as I am, won the silver medal in pistol shooting at the Paris Olympics with the most casual form you’ll ever see in Olympic competition. Wearing a t-shirt and jeans with one hand stuffed in his pocket, Dikec stood in stark contrast to his pistol shooting competitors decked out with the most technologically advanced equipment the sport has to offer. While his opponents looked like they had been sent from the future to shoot at distant targets, Dikec looked as if he had fallen out of bed, grabbed his weapon, and won the silver.

It reminded my football-addled brain of something I wrote last summer about fantasy managers’ overemphasis on what I might call fancy running back metrics. We look to these advanced numbers to concoct a sensible story in our minds about an efficient running back carving out a lead-back role. This, of course, assumes NFL coaches care about metrics or stats in general. They don’t, for the most part, and fantasy players would do well to acknowledge this painful truth.

For most of my time in the fantasy industry, I joined the chorus of metrics nerds pointing to various obscure metrics — rush yards over expected and yards after contact per attempt and breakaway rate and elusiveness rating and EPA per rush and efficiency rating — and screaming from the proverbial rooftop that so-and-so back was destined to overtake the back whose advanced numbers were in the toilet. If one player is better than the other, the thinking goes, that player is going to win. The cream rises to the top, things of that nature.

That’s not the way it works. It’s never worked that way, actually. NFL coaches treasure a running back’s ability to hang on to the ball and pick up blitzers and get what is blocked, even if none of that adds much to our fantasy box score. Coaches want nothing more than a reliable back. No mistakes. No negative yardage. No blown assignments. Whether or not this is optimal football decision making is beside the point. Fantasy managers have to pay attention to these factors (much) more than they would like. Otherwise our game is all about picking the best players, which of course it is not.

Boring running backs, as I wrote last summer, can be fun or fantasy football. They’re often the ones running routes and getting goal line looks and staying on the field in critical situations. Because, again, coaches love them and trust them implicitly.Many of these boring backs go in the so-called RB Dead Zone or, hark, Beyond The Dead Zone, where folks who went RB-heavy to start the draft aren’t even considering a back.

Those of you who — like me — largely fade running backs in the first five or six rounds have keen interest in boring guys going in round seven, eight, nine, and beyond. Now for some hindsight analysis: Taking two or three boring, later-round running backs worked quite well in 2023.

Raheem Mostert, taken as the 41st back off the draft board last summer, finished the fantasy season as the RB5 in PPR formats (the only legitimate formats). Kyren Williams, the 80th running back off drafts board — another way of saying he was not drafted in 12-team leagues — was fantasy’s seventh highest scoring back despite missing a few games. David Montgomery was the game’s 16th highest scoring back after being drafted as RB31. After being taken as the 27th back off draft boards — behind brother Dalvin — James Cook outscored all but 11 RBs in 2023.

And on and on it goes.

Not every boring middle or late round back is going to work out. Many will flop, possibly overtaken by their more explosive backfield mates favored by the spreadsheet warriors among us. There are, however, plenty of boring running backs who could quite easily work out this season and open avenues for you to stack your roster with elite receivers, tight ends, and quarterbacks.

Brian Robinson (RB32): A foundational part of any rundown of boring running backs, Robinson started Washington’s opening preseason game and dominated early downs against the Jets. Robinson did, however, share snaps with Austin Ekeler in the red zone in the preseason opener. Robinson could also lose out to Jayden Daniels on some goal line rushes.

So it’s not exactly a gleaming later-round profile for B-Rob (I generally don’t chase backs attached to ultra-mobile QBs). Robinson should be the Commanders’ clear-cut lead back, and in a Washington offense hoping to play fast, play volume could make this Washington backfield far more fantasy friendly than we might think.

Devin Singletary (RB33): Singletary is what we in the industry like to call a System Knower. Why’s that? Well, listen to Giants head coach Brian Daboll — Singletary’s offensive coordinator in Buffalo a few seasons ago — talk about his boring veteran runner.

“Devin’s been a productive back when he was with me at Buffalo,” Daboll said in June. “He knows our system inside and out.”

Coaches value System Knowers. We know this after years of watching underperforming running backs continue to get weekly run in the lead back role because they know the offense better than their backfield mates. That’s Singletary in Daboll’s scheme. If it makes the analytics nerds feel any better, Singletary regularly clocks in among the NFL’s best in yards before contact per rush (he ranked ninth in this category last year, just behind Kyren Williams). Singletary going to be on most of my fantasy squads and I won’t apologize for it.

Javonte Williams (RB34): Broncos head coach Sean Payton said during training camp that Willams was a “completely different” back this summer than he was in summer 2023, when he was only seven months removed from surgery on a catastrophic knee injury he suffered in 2022. Williams led Denver’s backfield by a good margin in 2023 and did almost nothing with that opportunity. All of his metrics tanked and after appearing generational as a rookie, he looked downright ordinary. It was a sad thing to witness.

Well, Williams is another year removed from an injury in which he tore his ACL, PCL, and LCL and he’s looking spry. It’s a jumbled backfield in Denver, to be sure. There’s Williams, big-bodied rookie Audric Estime, and hyper-efficient pass-catching dynamo Jaleel McLaughlin, not to mention Payton favorite and No. 2 back on the depth chart, Samaje Perine. Probably one of these guys is going to be cut before the regular season. I’m guessing it’s Perine, but who knows?

Williams only looks boring if you try to forget about how electric he was before his 2022 knee explosion. Javonte in 2021 led all rushers with at least 150 carries in broken tackle rate; he was fourth in PFF’s elusive rating; he was tops in yards after contact per rush; and he was top ten in yards after the catch per reception. Can Williams get back to that pre-injury form? I don’t know. But as the 34th running back off the board, I’m willing to find out.

Ezekiel Elliott (RB36) and Rico Dowdle (RB45): I’ve taken a fair bit of (deserved) flack on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, about my advocacy for Zeke Elliott as he enters his ninth NFL season. At the ripe old age of 29, Elliott has been summarily dismissed by fantasy drafters.

It makes sense. Elliott has been horrifically inefficient as a rusher and a pass catcher over the past two seasons. That includes his one-year tryst with the Patriots, where he had 184 rushes and caught 51 passes in one of the worst offenses in memory.

I’m not going to bore you with a litany of numbers demonstrating how awful Zeke has been since the start of the 2022 season (his downfall can be traced all the way back to 2020 if we’re being honest with ourselves). The reason I’m willing to take some bites of the Zeke apple in redraft formats is because a) I usually start my drafts with elite receivers and tight ends and b) Zeke, like Devin Singletary in New York, is a System Knower.

Elliott knows Mike McCarthy’s offense and apparently doesn’t make egregious errors that often land running backs on the bench. He’s also an all-time favorite of Jerry Jones. In a perfectly optimized, efficient world, this shouldn’t matter at all. It should be superfluous, ridiculous to even mention in the context of the Dallas depth chart and which back we’re targeting in the Cowboys backfield. This is the real world though, and in this world, Jerry gets what Jerry wants. The Cowboys are his fantasy team. That Jerry’s son Stephen talks about Zeke as if he’s the presumed starter offers me some confidence that Elliott will have a real chance to establish himself as the team’s No. 1 come September.

Rico Dowdle is a fine running back. He’s certainly better than Elliott. Perhaps that will matter if Zeke is as dusty as he seems and no amount of Zeke apologia from McCarthy and Jerry can keep Elliott atop the team’s backfield pecking order. Beat writer reports have been tough to interpret. Dowdle, entering his fourth NFL season with a grand total of 96 rushing attempts, could end up being the team’s top back or could be cut by the end of August, per reports. Our sharpest minds are looking into this very powerfully.

Look, you’re not going to enjoy rostering Zeke. It won’t be fun to watch him catch seven passes from Dak Prescott and immediately fall on his face after each grab. You won’t like it when Zeke gets stuffed at the goal line thrics before falling into the end zone on fourth down. In PPR formats, attached to a Cowboys offense that is sure to be absurdly pass heavy in 2024, Elliott might be serviceable if you’ve foregone the game’s elite rushers in the early rounds. I say embrace the boring Zeke if you like fantasy points.

Zack Moss (RB30) and Chase Brown (RB39): Moss is clearly the boring option here alongside the more exciting Brown, who is extremely fast and profiles as a big-play threat. Moss appears to be the plodding backfield option whose usage might come between the 20s while Brown sees more of the backfield’s high value touches (red zone work and pass-catching involvement).

But wait! Last season, Moss — rushing for 795 yards and five touchdowns for the Colts — ranked among the top-20 running backs in yards before contact per rush. Brown, meanwhile, was near the very bottom of the metric, in the neighborhood of hideously bad runners like Tank Bigsby, Miles Sanders, and Darrell Henderson. So maybe Moss isn’t entirely boring. Still, he’s not flashy.

I would have a tough time taking Moss considering he has a higher redraft ADP than Brown. In leagues reacting to Brown’s preseason usage — he took all the snaps with the Bengals’ first team offense last week against Tampa — Moss might be the right way to play it. Both backs have loads of contingency value: If either one misses time, the other is locked in to 20 weekly touches in the high powered Cincinnati offense.

Ty Chandler (RB47): Back to the aforementioned yards before contact per rush, a good indicator of a runner with good vision and the quicks to avoid hits at or near the line of scrimmage. Chandler in 2023 was fifth best in this metric on his 121 rushing attempts. Only Christian McCaffrey, De’Von Achane, David Montgomery, and Jaylen Warren were better. That didn’t mean much for fantasy purposes. Outside of a Week 15 outburst against the Bengals (157 total yards and a touchdown), Chandler did precious little with the lead back role in the final month of the 2023 season.

Though Chandler will certainly start the regular season behind Aaron Jones on the Vikings depth chart, he has paths to fantasy relevance. That he’s not the most thrilling fantasy selection of all time shouldn’t matter to us.

AJ Dillon (RB62): Perhaps no running back is more boring than AJ Dillon, who in summers past has hypnotized fantasy managers with the girth of his thighs only to prove to be among the NFL’s most tragically inefficient rushers. Now rookie RB MarShawn Lloyd is sidelined with a hamstring injury and Emmanuel Wilson could soon pass Lloyd on the Green Bay depth chart with another stellar preseason outing.

The Leap’s Jason Hirschorn, who covers the Packers, told us on the Rotoworld Football Show that Josh Jacobs is entrenched as the team’s starter, and Dillon might very well be the RB2. Dillon has 416 regular season touches for Matt LaFleur’s Packers over the past two seasons. He is very clearly a System Knower who, for whatever reason, has earned the coaches’ trust. With a bunch of contingency value, Dillon is something close to a must-get target for fantasy drafters who largely fade RBs in the opening rounds.